


Coming Up Tails

by SkysongMA



Series: This Is Not About Love [3]
Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Human AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 10:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkysongMA/pseuds/SkysongMA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not like they were on a schedule or anything. Marshall Lee calls when he feels like calling. On average, it comes once a week—but on average belies two-week stretches of nothing and weeks where Marshall Lee drags him out of bed every night. </p>
<p>But two weeks become three, and three weeks become four, and G.B. finds himself checking his call history more and more, looking at the anonymous number and the time and date stamp beside it. </p>
<p>He starts watching the local news again; he isn’t sure why. But there certainly is a lot of violence in the city. He’s never thought about it before. And he starts reading the paper, going through the police reports with a thoroughness he reserves for reading recipes.</p>
<p>At night, he goes up to the roof and stares at the stars, but it isn’t the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Up Tails

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "The Scientist" by Coldplay.

Every once in a while, Marshall Lee comes over for dinner. G.B. cooks, because he doesn’t want Pepper breathing down his neck, and because he finds it soothing. Marshall Lee always seems pleasantly surprised, even as he teases G.B. about his apron and his haircut and his timers shaped like penguins.

It’s okay, though. G.B. is getting used to it. Especially because after they eat, they climb up on the roof to stargaze—which is just an excuse to talk, at least as far as G.B. can tell. Marshall Lee is more comfortable talking when he can do it in the dark.

***  
  
Every once in a while, Marshall Lee takes G.B. out somewhere.   
  
Once he drags G.B. out of bed at midnight so they can watch the sunrise from the roof of the mall. G.B. tells him this is illegal, but he likes looking out over the city when everything is fresh and new and no one is awake to look back. Marshall Lee doesn’t even ruin the moment; he just watches G.B. watch, and G.B. forgets to think about it all so much.   
  
Once they break into a pool after it closes. Again, G.B. tells Marshall Lee it’s illegal, but he has to admit that swimming is more fun without screaming children and obnoxious couples. There’s something achingly beautiful about the ceiling at night when they are both floating on their backs watching patterns play over it. He doesn’t know how to tell Marshall Lee that. He wishes he did.  
  
Once Marshall Lee brings him to a dark club where a series of scream metal bands perform. G.B. doesn’t like the bands or the crowds or the fog machine, but he likes sitting with Marshall Lee as he mouths the words. G.B. wonders what kind of pair they make to other people. What kind of pair they make to Marshall Lee.   
  
G.B. is happy, he thinks. It’s been a long time since he felt anything strongly enough to know. But he has someone to eat his cupcakes—even if Marshall Lee insists on making a sandwich of them—and Marshall Lee continues to unfold before him like complicated origami demonstrated in reverse.   
  
Marshall Lee’s calls never come from the same pay phone twice, and he never asks to be dropped off on the same block, and he never talks about where he came from or who he’s living with or even what he had for breakfast. But the calls don’t stop.  
  
Until they do.   
  
***  
  
It is not like they were on a schedule. Marshall Lee calls when he feels like calling. On average, it comes once a week—but  _on average_  belies two-week stretches of nothing and weeks where Marshall Lee drags him out of bed every night.   
  
But two weeks become three, and three weeks become four, and G.B. finds himself checking his call history more and more, looking at the anonymous number and the time and date stamp beside it.   
  
He starts watching the local news again. There certainly is a lot of violence in the city. He’s never thought about that before. And he starts reading the paper, going through the police reports with a thoroughness he reserves for reading recipes.  
  
At night, he goes up to the roof and stares at the stars, but it isn’t the same.  
  
***  
  
“So where is he?” Monochrome asks, his thin fingers adjusting the knobs of his dulcimer.  
  
G.B. does not look up from his stock portfolio, but he bites his lip, hard.  
  
“Did you fight with him?”   
  
G.B. glares—not _at_ anything. Just glaring, boiled down to the essentials. “Marshall Lee and I fight all the time, Monochrome. You have pointed that out yourself on several occasions.”  
  
Monochrome doesn’t speak, but he isn’t done. The set of his shoulders is tense—he hates confrontations. Usually, Monochrome is an impenetrable black wall, in every way possible: thought, word, appearance. But sometimes the cracks show, and G.B. remembers that they aren’t that far apart in age, even though Monochrome is already in college and moving toward grad school.   
  
Finally, Monochrome says, “You know what I meant.”  
  
G.B. does, and it makes him squirm. Monochrome speaks so rarely that G.B. feels he should never disencourage him, even when it makes G.B. uncomfortable. Which it almost always does. Monochrome is always so… to the point.   
  
He bites his lip for a different reason. The pride covering his secrets melts away, layer by layer. “...We didn’t fight. He just… hasn’t called.”  
  
Monochrome relaxes, just a touch, and his fingers move on the knob again. “…I’m sorry.”  
  
G.B. blinks. “But… you don’t like him.”  
  
Monochrome tosses his head, knocking the white strand of hair out of his eyes. “You do.”  
  
G.B. finally bites through his lower lip and presses his thumb against the cut, wincing. It’s not from the pain.   
  
Monochrome brings the string to true and strikes it, letting the high, perfect note hang in the air.   
  
***  
  
It’s a month, and then it’s five weeks, and then it is six. G.B. does not know if he can call the feeling in his heart worry. He doesn’t know what to call anything when it comes to Marshall Lee.  
  
G.B.’s call log is getting extremely long, but he doesn’t empty it. There’s no point in keeping the phone number, since it means nothing, but he doesn’t erase his history all the same.  
  
***  
  
By week seven, things have settled back to normal. Pepper has stopped asking him if there will be a guest for dinner. Monochrome doesn’t mention Marshall Lee. G.B. has grown used to twitching every time his phone goes.   
  
He goes to class and bakes and studies and performs experiments, but it can’t be the same now: buried beneath it is the wish that someone would take him out to the mall or to the pool or to a concert.  
  
Only it’s not really a wish for  _someone_. The person in his wish is as specific as the number in his phone is anonymous. And holding on to both is pointless.


End file.
